Waiting.

I once waited on Kirk Hammett. Before I tell you what it was like to wait on someone from the band who inspired me to go out & buy an electric 6-string when I was 20 years old (“Fade To Black,” bebe.), there’s a little pre-story some might find enjoyable.

Once upon a time, in a little bar owned by a couple (now divorced) who loved rock music, there was a customer who I will call Jake, just for the hell of it. Now, Jake was thought to be a little odd by many if not most regulars in the bar, although he wasn’t a bad guy or anything. First, once he had cornered someone to talk to, he would talk incessantly. Non-stop. I mean, the guy really knew how to ramble (Jimmy Page to be mentioned later in this story). This initially scared a few people & I do recall someone hiding in the restroom to escape Jake’s endless chat.
Initially I was a total dick to him. I thought he was like that weird dude that used to walk around Koko Marina with a guitar & always called me “Ginger.” He’d tried to talk theology with me & I had given him the “Do you believe that God is so great that He could make a rock so big that even He could not move it” speech. Yeah, I’m mean. I also talk to my crank callers until they hang up on me. Whatever. Anyway, after awhile I got used to Jake, & although occasionally I would have to tell him, “Ok, you are talking too much,” for the most part I was pleased to see him when he came by to visit.

The second thing that caused people to think Jake was odd was that during his long soliloquies he would sometimes mention his “good friend James Hetfield” or his “best friend Kirk Hammett.” He would tell people about a conversation he just had with Kirk Hammet the other day. People would roll their eyes sideways at me & I would shrug. I remember I had sex with John Taylor when I was 15 but no one would believe me either. Oh well.

So then one night Jake walks in with Kirk Hammett.

When they first walked in, I greeted Jake & his girlfriend. I remember the very tan guy with the curly black hair (I thought to myself, “This guy looks a lot like Kirk Hammett. But he’s too tan.”) gave me this look & I didn’t know if it was unfriendly or not. I asked what I could get for them & the pretty blond with the tattooed sleeve & high heels asked if we had any Hawaiian beers.

“I don’t think there’s such a thing as Hawaiian beer,” I said. That’s me, the compulsive truthful. I’m the kind of person that if you say, “Hey, how are you?” I will actually stop & assess before I give you an answer. I have no consideration of what you are actually hoping to hear.

“Well, there’s Kona Longboard Lager,” the blond said.

“Which is bottled in California,” I replied, probably a little too close on the tail of her sentence. You know, I Googled that just now to check for accuracy & everything says they have a brewery in Kona, so maybe I’m wrong. However, “bottled in CA” is what I had read on the bottle. Same for Asahi. I don’t like that beer anyway.

“Well, excuse me,” the blond said. I had pissed her off. Kirk Hammett ordered a Corona.

The rest of my waiting experience was uneventful. Mr. Hammett was quietly cordial, Jake talked, & the blond ignored me or talked down to me for the rest of the night. They left a decent tip. That is all.

My ex-husband told me about waiting on the guys from Lit. These three white guys had come into the bar, & they had loved the karaoke selection, & kept asking him if he had this song or that song. He had told them to look for the songs themselves; I forget what his exact words were but he was a bit stressed at the time. Nevertheless they had a great time, & had left enthusiastically saying, “We’ll be back!” And then he saw their pictures in the paper the next day since they were in Honolulu for concert that weekend.

What prompted all this story-telling was what my friend Darren told me while we were driving home from the pool hall about waiting on Jimmy Page. Darren is a server at a well-established Italian place in Waikiki; in fact, the place where my ex-husband proposed to me many millions of years ago. Anyway, someone called & made a reservation under the name “Jimmy Page.” Darren & the other servers chuckled over this; either it was someone with delusions or a very coincidental name, but it turned out to actually be Jimmy Page. He ordered $13 spaghetti & left a $87 tip (whatever the change was from $100.).

Now that’s rock n’ roll.

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Kirk Hammett used to buy comic books from me when I was a college student behind the counter at a comics store in Berkeley. “Hey,” one of my co-workers told me after he’d come in one day, “that was Kirk Hammett.” “Who?” “You know, from Metallica.” “Ohhhhh.” (I wasn’t especially clueful back then.) Little did I know that 20 years later, my stepdaughter would be blown away by this rather trivial tidbit from my past. “OMIGOD!! YOU MET KIRK HAMMETT?!?” Heh.